How 72andSunny Built FA-BOOM for Call of Duty Ghosts
FA-BOOM is a 15-second film spot created by 72andSunny for Activision's Call of Duty: Ghosts, published in the United States in October 2013 to build anticipation ahead of the game's November 5 release, using compressed cinematic energy and franchise authority to prime the US gaming audience for one of the year's most anticipated console launches.
The campaign carries a single, percussive identity: maximum impact delivered in minimum time. Where many entertainment launches of the period extended their storytelling across 60- or 90-second formats, FA-BOOM makes the opposite creative argument — that the Call of Duty brand carries enough cultural charge to need only a detonation, not an explanation. The spot sits within a broader Ghosts launch effort by 72andSunny that also included a 90-second "Masks" film and extensive out-of-home work, according to Clapboard's campaign archive. FA-BOOM functions as the sharpest edge of that integrated push.
In the United States, Call of Duty: Ghosts arrived as one of the most commercially loaded titles in franchise history, releasing simultaneously across current and next-generation console platforms. The campaign's social layer reinforced urgency through the positioning lines "Get Ready World" and "It's Call of Duty Time," with Facebook and Twitter prompts connecting the broadcast spot to owned digital channels. Clapboard's archive records more than 221,000 views for the FA-BOOM asset, a figure that reflects organic circulation of a paid media unit repurposed as shareable content. The Clapboard Score for FA-BOOM stands at 63 out of 100, indicating a competent and strategically coherent execution that fulfils its launch brief without redefining the creative category.
Call of Duty occupied a dominant position in the US console market when FA-BOOM was published in October 2013. The global games market was valued at approximately 70.4 billion dollars in 2013, representing year-over-year growth of around six percent, according to Newzoo estimates cited by Game Developer. Console games alone accounted for roughly 30.6 billion dollars, or approximately 43 percent of total global market value, according to the same Newzoo data reported via Game Developer. Within that context, the US remained the single largest individual territory for premium console software, making the domestic launch window for Ghosts a high-stakes commercial moment.
The strategic brief facing 72andSunny was not to introduce Call of Duty — it was to sustain and accelerate a purchase intention that already existed among a loyal, high-frequency player base. This distinction shapes the creative logic of FA-BOOM entirely. The spot does not explain the game, demonstrate gameplay, or introduce characters. It assumes prior knowledge and converts that assumption into confidence. This approach mirrors the broader positioning of the Ghosts campaign under "Get Ready World" and "It's Call of Duty Time" — language that addresses an audience already waiting, not one that needs persuading.
Competitive pressure in this window was substantial. Electronic Arts' Battlefield 4 launched within days of Call of Duty: Ghosts, creating a direct head-to-head moment in the US market that both franchises had been building toward across their respective marketing campaigns. Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag also competed for the same entertainment-spending occasion. Against that landscape, Call of Duty's decision to lean into brevity and cultural authority — rather than feature-level comparison — reflects a brand comfortable with category leadership. The lineage of this confidence traces at least as far as the 2010 "There's a Soldier in All of Us" campaign for Black Ops, created by TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles, which placed Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel alongside civilians on a battlefield and aired during NFL programming, according to Clapboard's archive.
FA-BOOM compresses an entire entertainment marketing argument into 15 seconds. The spot's creative construction depends on the assumption that compression itself communicates power — that a franchise willing to say everything in less time than a standard pre-roll must be a franchise that does not need to justify itself. This is an unusual creative stance for the gaming category, where competitors routinely deploy extended cinematic trailers to demonstrate world-building, narrative, and production value.
The broader 72andSunny campaign for Call of Duty: Ghosts demonstrates range that FA-BOOM's brevity deliberately obscures. The 90-second "Masks" spot, which ran in parallel with FA-BOOM as part of the same launch effort according to Clapboard's archive, provided the narrative and atmospheric depth that the 15-second unit withholds. The two executions function as a system: "Masks" earns attention, FA-BOOM locks in recall. This kind of format differentiation — matching content length to platform context — represents a considered production strategy rather than an afterthought.
Production credits for the FA-BOOM spot are not publicly documented in available sources. The campaign was developed by 72andSunny, the Los Angeles-based agency that held the Call of Duty creative account during this period, a relationship reflected in the agency's concurrent development of both the film and out-of-home elements of the Ghosts launch. The sonic and visual construction of FA-BOOM — suggested by the onomatopoeic title itself — points to a spot built primarily around audio impact and a single dominant image rather than sequential narrative. In a media environment where a 15-second unit competes with content-level attention, the decision to centre the execution on a percussive brand moment rather than product demonstration reflects a coherent craft philosophy.
Call of Duty: Ghosts generated more than one billion dollars in retail sales within the first 24 hours of its November 5, 2013 launch, according to Activision's investor communications as reported by Marketplace and Engadget. That figure positions the title among the fastest revenue-generating entertainment releases in US history at the time and provides the commercial backdrop against which FA-BOOM operated as a pre-launch awareness driver.
No campaign-specific sales lift, brand-tracking movement, or independently measured effectiveness data for FA-BOOM is publicly available. The Clapboard archive records more than 221,000 views for the asset, and no award recognitions for FA-BOOM have been identified across Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clios, or the Webby Awards. In the absence of isolated campaign metrics, the structural evidence of effectiveness rests in the mechanics of the execution itself. A 15-second film built for a franchise with an established US audience does not need to generate awareness — it needs to sustain and sharpen purchase intent in a narrow pre-launch window. FA-BOOM is designed for that function specifically.
The broader Ghosts launch, which included the "Masks" long-form film and out-of-home components alongside FA-BOOM, formed an integrated campaign system whose commercial outcome is documented in Activision's own first-day sales figures. Attributing any share of that outcome to FA-BOOM individually is not possible from available data. What is traceable is the strategic logic: compress the brand to its most potent form, deploy it at scale in the US market ahead of a major console release window, and let the franchise's momentum do the remaining work. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes this brief correctly without producing creative work that extends beyond its immediate commercial mandate.
FA-BOOM is a 15-second film spot created by 72andSunny for the US launch of Call of Duty: Ghosts, published in October 2013. It formed part of a broader integrated campaign that included the 90-second "Masks" film and out-of-home work, designed to build launch momentum ahead of the game's November 5, 2013 release.
72andSunny created FA-BOOM for Activision's Call of Duty: Ghosts. The Los Angeles-based agency developed the full Ghosts launch campaign in the United States, including the film and out-of-home elements. FA-BOOM represented the shortest and most compressed piece of creative within that integrated effort.
Call of Duty: Ghosts generated more than one billion dollars in retail sales within its first 24 hours, according to Activision investor communications as reported by Marketplace and Engadget. The November 5, 2013 release made it one of the fastest-selling entertainment titles in US market history at the time of launch.
No award recognitions for FA-BOOM have been identified across Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clios, or the Webby Awards. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, reflecting a strategically coherent execution that fulfilled its US launch brief without producing work that redefined the creative category.
The global games market reached approximately 70.4 billion dollars in 2013, up around six percent year over year, according to Newzoo estimates reported by Game Developer. Console games represented roughly 43 percent of that total. The United States remained the primary commercial territory for premium console software, making the Ghosts launch window highly competitive.
FA-BOOM continues a tradition of culturally assertive Call of Duty advertising in the United States. The franchise's 2010 "There's a Soldier in All of Us" campaign, created by TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles for Black Ops and featuring Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel, established the template of audience-first creative that assumes loyalty rather than building it from scratch.
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